Movement Towards Socialism (Bolivia)

September 8, 2011 -- Green Left Weekly-- The decision by leaders of the Sub Central of the Indigenous
Territory and National Isiboro Secure Park (TIPNIS) to initiate a
500-kilometre protest march on Bolivia's capital of La Paz has
ignited much debate about the nature of Bolivia’s first Indigenous
led-government. The Sub Central of TIPNIS unites the 64 indigenous communities within the park.

Much analysis has focused on the supposed hypocrisy of the government
headed by Evo Morales, Bolivia's first Indigenous head of state. The
Morales government has been criticised for pursuing pro-capitalist
development and trampling on the rights of its own Indigenous people.

Many analysts have also highlighted the contradiction between
Morales’ public discourse in defence of Indigenous rights and Mother
Earth, and the proposal of his government’s to build a highway that
would run through this protected area of the Amazon.

From Rebellion to Reform in Bolivia: Class Struggle, Indigenous Liberation, and the Politics of Evo MoralesBy Jeffrey WebberHaymarket
Books, 2011

August 19, 2011 -- Aborado - Latin America uncovered -- The Evo Morales government recently celebrated its
2000th day in power in Bolivia – a feat in its own right for a country
that has had around 180 coups since 1825 – any serious attempt to
explain the underlying dynamics of this decade long political process
should be welcomed. Combining his academic research and extensive
fieldwork in Bolivia, Jeffrey Webber sets out to do exactly that in From Rebellion to Reform in Bolivia. Unfortunately, the end result leaves a lot to be desired.

The election of Bolivia’s first Indigenous president, on the back of a
mass rebellion that overthrew successive governments has stirred great
interest in this small Andean nation.

August 7, 2011 -- Green Left Weekly -- Speaking to CNN en Espanol on July 27, Bolivia's President Evo Morales
said, “When presidents do not submit to the United States government, to
its policies, there are coups.” His comments are backed by attempts by the US and Bolivia’s right wing to bring down his government.

Recently released WikiLeaks cables prove the US embassy was in close
contact with dissident military officers only months before a coup
attempt was carried out in September 2008.

But the close relationship between the US and Bolivia’s military has a long history.

In recent years, the “war on drugs” provided the US with cover to extend its control over Bolivia’s armed forces. As a coca grower union leader from the Chapare region, Morales faced
the direct and brutal consequences of the US “war on drugs”.

During the 1980s and 1990s, the Chapare region, nestled in the heart
of Bolivia, became the site of bloody massacres carried out by US and
Bolivian anti-narcotics forces. As part of its attempts to destroy coca, seen by indigenous Bolivians
as a “sacred leaf” and part of their traditional way of life, the US
established and funded the Mobile Units for Rural Patrolling (UMOPAR) in
the Chapare.

May 5, 2011 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Six
years after Bolivians elected their first Indigenous-led government, their
ongoing struggle for national and social liberation remains a subject of debate
and disagreement among socialists around the world.

January 24, 2011 -- Green Left Weekly -- On December 31, the Bolivian government of President Evo Morales
repealed a decree, passed five days earlier, to remove subsidies for
fuel. The repeal came after protests and discontent at the resulting price increases from many of the government’s poor supporters.

“Why is the government making us suffer during these days … I don’t
understand, I don’t understand”, Carla, a housewife in El Alto told
Radio Atipiri on New Years Eve. An elderly woman expressed the shock of many supporters of Bolivia’s
first indigenous president: “We are poor, we don’t have anything, what
are we going to now, Evo has betrayed us, he must go.”

They were among the many that came out against the government’s
decree, which sent petrol and diesel prices up by 73% and 83%
respectively. It also caused spikes in the price of transport and food.

Problems and challenges face Bolivia's radical
government -- led by President Evo Morales (above), the country’s first Indigenous head
of state -- and the process of change it leads. Australia's Green Left Weekly
has published two articles on the question, by Eduardo Paz Rada, editor
of Bolivia-based magazine Patria Grande, and Pablo Stefanoni, editor of the Bolivian edition of Le Monde Diplomatique. Both were translated by Federico Fuentes. See also Fuente's "Bolivia: Warning signs as social tensions erupt" and the related comments.

* * *

By Eduardo Paz Rada

September 5, 2010 -- Following the political and social transformations undertaken over
the past five years by the Evo Morales government with the huge, active
support of Bolivia’s popular sectors that have mobilised around their
demands since 2000, the political map has radically changed.

Indigenous Quechua protesters blockaded the main road between La Paz and Potosi on August 8.

By Federico Fuentes

August 15, 2010 -- Green Left Weekly -- Recent scenes of roadblocks, strikes and even the dynamiting of a
vice-minister’s home in the Bolivian department (administrative
district) of Potosi, reminiscent of the days of previous neoliberal
governments, have left many asking themselves what is really going on in
the “new” Bolivia of Indigenous President Evo Morales.

Since July 29, the city of Potosi, which has 160,000 inhabitants, has
ground to a halt. Locals are up in arms over what they perceive to be a
lack of support for regional development on the part of the national
government. Potosi is Bolivia’s poorest department but the most important for the
mining sector, which is on the verge of surpassing gas as the country’s
principal export because of rising mineral prices.

May 22, 2010 -- Green Left Weekly -- Ironically, while the left is one of the fiercest critics of biased
media coverage, it can also fall into the trap of corporate media
distortions, particularly if its coverage dovetails with its own
fantasies. A May
14 article by Daniel Lopez published on the website of Australian
group Socialist Alternative is proof of this. The article echoes the view of a May 10 article on the BBC website,
which has a clear dislike of Bolivia's President Evo Morales.

The BBC article argued a “general strike” by Bolivian unions marked
“the end of the honeymoon period between the left-wing Mr Morales and
his power base among the country's poor”. This position fits nicely with the outlook of Socialist Alternative,
which also condemns Bolivia’s first Indigenous president.

April 10, 2010 -- Bolivia Rising -- Although final figures will
not be known until April 24, the results of Bolivia's April 4 regional
elections have ratified the continued advance of the "democratic and
cultural revolution" led by the country's first Indigenous president, Evo
Morales. However, it also highlights some of the shortcomings
and obstacles the process of change faces.

Initial results from
the election for governors, mayors and representatives to municipal
councils and departmental assemblies have confirmed the Morales-led
Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) as the sole political force with strong
support across Bolivia.

It follows the historic 64% vote to
reelect Morales and the two-thirds majority MAS obtained in the
Plurinational Assembly last December.

Bolivia's new justice minister Nilda Copa, one of the 10 women among the country's 20 government ministers.

By Lisa Macdonald

March 3, 2010 -- In January,
Bolivia’s left-wing President Evo Morales began his second term by
appointing a new cabinet in which women are equally represented for the
first time. Morales, Bolivia’s first president from the nation’s long-oppressed Indigenous majority, is leading a revolutionary process of
transformation. The 10 women ministers are from a wide range of backgrounds, and three
of them are Indigenous.

Introducing the new ministers, Morales said: “My
great dream has come true — half the cabinet seats are held by women. This is a homage to my mother, my sister and my daughter.”

In the December 6, 2010, national elections, in which there was the
highest-ever voter participation in Bolivia, Morales and his Movement towards
Socialism (MAS) party won a resounding victory. Morales was re-elected
with a record 64.2% of the vote and the MAS secured the two-thirds
majority in the Senate needed to pass legislation to advance its
pro-people program.

November 27, 2009 -- Addressing delegates at the International Encounter of Left Parties held in Caracas, November 19-21, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez said that with the capitalist crisis and threat of war risking the future of humanity, “the people are clamoring” for greater unity of those willing to fight for socialism.

Chavez used his November 20 speech to the conference, which involved delegates from 55 left groups from 31 countries, to call for a new international socialist organisation to unite left groups and social movements: “The time has come for us to organise the Fifth International.”

November 23, 2009 – Venezuelanalysis.com – Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez called
for the formation of a “Fifth International” of left parties and social
movements to confront the challenge posed by the global crisis of
capitalism. The president made the announcement during an international
conference of more than 50 left organisations from 31
countries held in Caracas over November 19-21.

“I assume responsibility before the world. I think it is time to
convene the Fifth International, and I dare to make the call, which I
think is a necessity. I dare to request that we create my proposal,”
Chavez said.

Interview with with Álvaro García Linera, vice-president of Bolivia, by Maristella Svampa, Pablo Stefanoni and Ricardo Bajo, from August 2009 Bolivian edition of Le Monde Diplomatique. English translation and notes by Richard Fidler for the Bolivia Rising blog. Available in Spanish at http://tinyurl.com/kle4vt.

September 11, 2009 -- What is the explanation for the weakening of the opposition after more than two years of confrontations?

For
President Evo Morale’s government the Constituent Assembly offered the
possibility of arming a broad collective ensemble of all the country’s
social forces. We placed ourselves at the head of this effort to build
a new constitutional consensus. Internally, within the people, we had
to pull together the popular bloc — not an easy task, because there was
a lot of corporate diversity — and then we had to follow this up with
the opening to the other social sectors, who are an important
opposition albeit a minority.

Bolivians celebrate their new constitution. President Evo Morales in centre.

The following article by Raúl Prada Alcoreza was originally published in the first issue (June 2008) of Crítica y Emancipación,
a biannual Latin American journal of the social sciences. This
translation from the Spanish, by Shana Yael Shubs and Ruth Felder, was
published this year in a complete English-language version of the
journal’s first issue. It was distributed at the recent congress of the
Latin American Studies Association, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in
June. A review of the first issue of Crítica y Emancipación was published at http://tinyurl.com/nuk4jp. This article also appeared at Bolivia Rising.

Interview with Bolivia’s foreign minister
David Choquehuanca by Patricia
Bravo and Cris González, translated from the original article in the March
20, 2009, edition of Punto Final
(Chile) by David
Montoute.

David Choquehuanca.

Bolivia’s new ``Political
Constitution of the State’’, approved by referendum on January 25, 2009, by
61.4% of the vote and announced on February 7, is clearly of transcendental
importance for the refoundation of Bolivia. The recognition of individual and collective
rights, popular participation, the principle of equality and the end of all
types of exclusion and discrimination are all present in the new constitutional
text.

It establishes the creation of “a Unified Social
State of Law whose character would be Plurinational Communitarian, free,
independent, sovereign, democratic, intercultural, with decentralised
autonomous departments, regions, municipalities and indigenous
circumscriptions”.

April 16, 2009
– During his intervention at the seventh ALBA Summit, Bolivia's president
Evo Morales recalled the 1962 documents of the Organisation of American
States (OAS) that resulted in Cuba being expelled from the organisation, and outlined the importance of reflecting on the motives of that expulsion.

The
resolution indicates that the adherence of any member country to
Marxism-Leninism, and the association of any member government of the
organisation with the communist bloc, broke the unity and solidarity of
the hemisphere. Therefore, given that the government of Cuba
identified itself as Marxist-Leninist, it was incompatible with the
purpose of the OAS and was therefore excluded from participating.